WSLC Reports Today
Updated DAILY... Almost Every Day™ 

Links are functional at date of posting, but sometimes expire. Some links require free registration.  WSLC Reports Today links to stories of interest to organized labor; some positive, some negative.  The intention is to inform.

THURSDAY,  APRIL 24

Workers Memorial Day Materials Include McCain’s Voting Record on Job Safety -- From the AFL-CIO -- New and updated materials are now online and ready to download to help you prepare for Workers Memorial Day on April 28 and to help you get the message out to the media and your community. Every year, thousands of workers are killed on the job and millions more are hurt or become sick because of their work. Next Monday, on Workers Memorial Day, workers, union activists, religious and community leaders and elected officials are expected to take part in more than 10,000 memorial services, rallies and marches to honor workers killed and injured on the job. They also will call on lawmakers to improve workplace safety standards.

Death on the Job Report: More Workers Killed, Fewer Employer Penalties -- AFL-CIO -- More workers are being killed on the job, but employers who are found to have violated federal safety laws in fatality cases are paying as little as $750 in penalties for each death, according to the latest edition of the AFL-CIO’s annual report Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect.

GOP Blocks Tribute to Labor Hero Cesar Chavez -- Alter Net -- In an outrageous move, Senate Republicans blocked a resolution recognizing Chavez's life and work. They quietly blocked the resolution using parliamentary procedure, and gave no reason for doing so. Their votes implied that a man who Robert F. Kennedy called "one of the most heroic figures of our time" is not worth honoring, even with a symbolic gesture. Unfortunately, this kind of insensitivity is part of a broader pattern in the Republican Party, a pattern of actions that is at odds with the values that Latinos hold dear.

Local News:

• Labor Group Calls for Flood Cleanup Help-- Bellingham Herald  -- A group called Labor Helping Neighbor is in search of volunteers for flood relief work on Saturday in the Boistfort Valley. Volunteers are being asked to bring boots and gloves, and meet at 9 a.m. at the Baw Faw Grange in Boistfort. A press release from the group said labor union members and Democrats will assemble to help farmers with extra work getting ready for the spring planting season. Check out how you can help on our News Page
• Ball to close Kent can plant; 111 to lose jobs -- Puget Sound Business Journal -- Ball Corp. said it will close its aluminum beverage can-making plant in Kent in the third quarter, putting 111 people out of work. "The viability of the Kent plant in the current market became increasingly unsustainable," said John Friedery, senior vice president and president of Ball's metal beverage packaging division, Americas and Asia, in a statement.
• Liberty Mutual buys Safeco insurance company for $6.2B -- Seattle Times -- "It's premature to know how many and who will be affected," Liberty Mutual Chief Executive Ted Kelly said. "It won't affect just Safeco employees, but also existing Liberty Mutual employees." Kelly did not say where the job cuts will happen, but he indicated that the Northwest will be hit.
• Need a job? Green-collar opportunities await -- Everett Herald -- Gov. Chris Gregoire plans to create 25,000 new green-collar jobs in Washington by 2020. What defines a green-collar job? Any occupation that promotes our shift to a more energy-conscious and energy-efficient culture. It's a phrase that covers a lot of ground, which is outstanding news for job seekers. The focus on eco-friendly living generates jobs across the board. At all levels, in all industries. The possibilities are endless.
• Giant trusses readied for bridge -- Columbian -- Close to 60 people worked on the first truss during its construction, said Tom Hickman, sales and marketing manager of Oregon Iron Works. The company removed a wall from the building where the truss was manufactured and used 16 55-ton power dollies to roll it outside. It took more than 25 people on the ground and behind the scenes to move the structure, Hickman said.
• Boeing's bottom line: big profits -- Everett Herald --That -- along with Boeing's strong backlog -- is good news for the company's workers in Everett. With 3,600 unfilled jet orders, Boeing has a record-breaking commercial airplanes backlog of $271 billion and a companywide total backlog of $346.2 billion. Even if the jet market cools, as many observers believe it will, Boeing still has several years' worth of work.
• Students who turn violent are core of Issaquah labor dispute -- Seattle Times -- Educational assistants want to retain contract language that lets them opt out of working with students whose behavior poses a safety threat, and the district, which argues that aides and teachers can't choose whom they'll work with. The district's 310 educational assistants have been working without a contract since August. Thursday night, they reached a tentative agreement with the district and will vote on a new contract Tuesday. Other unions in the district support the aides and say the district hasn't listened to staff concerns about a few highly aggressive students.
• Workplace safety measures added at Tacoma Goodwill after employee death -- Tacoma Tribune -- Tacoma Goodwill Industries has installed lockout devices on three industrial box lifters at its Nalley Valley operations center, including the one in which an employee was crushed to death last week. The devices, which require a key to make the machine operable, were voluntarily installed as part of a safety review at the center after the April 15 death of Nick Miller.
• Simpson Investment Co. will build power plant at Tacoma Tideflats mill -- Tacoma Tribune -- Tacoma’s biggest forest products company is entering a new business: green power. Tacoma-based Simpson Investment Co. announced Wednesday that it’s spending $100 million to build a new co-generation plant at its Tacoma Tideflats’ paper mill. That generation facility will burn sawmill and paper mill waste products, wood building demolition waste, debris from logging sites and even bark, trimmings and sawdust mined from old lumber mill landfill sites.
• Cleanup chief lists top Hanford priorities -- Tri-Cities Herald -- DOE has acknowledged the Bush administration's budget request for cleanup in fiscal year 2009 will not meet all legal deadlines, Rispoli said. At Hanford, DOE could miss 18 Tri-Party Agreement deadlines over the next two years.

Political and Legislative:

AFL-CIO Congressional Records Available click here for more

• Senate Republicans kill pay disparity bill -- AP -- Senate Republicans killed legislation Wednesday aimed at removing limits on how long workers can wait before suing their employers for pay discrimination.

• Senator Bernie Sanders Stands Up For the Middle Class and Takes on Corporate Mainstream Media -- Buzz Flash -- 

  Year after year, the Bush people come forward and say how great the economy is, and that's full of crap. Since Bush has been President, median family income has gone down. For working families, it's gone down hundreds of dollars. Five million more people have slipped into poverty. Eight million people have lost their health insurance. Three million Americans have lost their pensions. And we have lost millions of good-paying jobs.-- Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT)

• Old, new media personalities strive to overthrow Hastings -- Yakima  Herald -- Don Moody, 56, of Wenatchee is an author and spent more than two decades as a radio newsman. John Gotts, 40, of White Salmon is an Internet entrepreneur who made news two years ago with his ultimately doomed $3 million purchase of Wiki.com. Both plan to run as Democrats, and both have fairly radical ideas for economic policy.

McCain Myth Busters: 

• Check out the latest on the AFL-CIO's website:

  McCain Revealed. There you will find the real story about Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the Republican nominee for president. McCain has built a media-friendly reputation as a “maverick” and moderate. But there’s nothing moderate about McCain, a loyal ally of Bush who has consistently and perniciously voted against the interests of working families in his decades-long career in Washington.

   

  Click here to go to a page full of previously posted articles on John McCain. 

• John McCain and the Simple Arithmetic of Republican Economic Failure -- Huffington Post -- John McCain is a "deficit hawk"? These days, that's about as accurate as saying Donald Trump is homeless. Let's cut through the nonsense and talk about real numbers. Numbers tell a story. Especially over time. They compel us to focus on results -- success and failure. Over the short term, maybe a few years, numbers can be manipulated or give false signals. But not over decades, and not over a generation. The numbers over the past 30 years are not refutable. When it comes to creating jobs and managing the nation's finances, Democratic presidents demonstrate success while Republican presidents show failure.
• McCain opposes equal pay bill in Senate -- AP -- Republican Sen. John McCain, campaigning through poverty-stricken cities and towns, said Wednesday he opposes a Senate bill that seeks equal pay for women because it would lead to more lawsuits. Democratic National Committee spokeswoman Karen Finney said: "At a time when American families are struggling to keep their homes and jobs while paying more for everything from gasoline to groceries, how on Earth would anyone who thinks they can lead our country also think it's acceptable to oppose equal pay for America's mothers, wives and daughters?"

National News:

• State of the Union: SEIU Faces Dissent In the Ranks -- In These Times --  The infighting pits United Healthcare Workers-West (UHW) -- a 150,000-member California healthcare local union -- and its president, Sal Rosselli, against the international union's leadership. Simmering for several years, the disagreements boiled over in February when Rosselli resigned from the international union executive committee. Then, in late March, Stern took the first step toward implementing a trusteeship that would allow him to oust UHW leaders and take control of the local. A complex web of grievances caused the dispute. But Rosselli charges that Stern has pursued growth in numbers by centralizing power and resources, and by granting concessions to corporations.
• New-Homes Supply Builds; Durable Goods Orders Slide -- WSJ --  U.S. new-home sales slid further in March to their lowest level since 1991 while the supply of homes for sale soared to nearly a three-decade high, suggesting little prospect of any near-term turnaround..... Demand for big-ticket items in the U.S. unexpectedly declined for a third-straight month in March, a government report showed, suggesting no end in sight yet for the downturn gripping the manufacturing sector and broader economy.
• US labor presses CAFTA complaint against Guatemala --  Reuters -- The complaint is the first of its kind under the labor provisions of the U.S.-Central American Free Trade Agreement, or CAFTA, which the AFL-CIO labor federation bitterly opposed when it was approved by Congress in 2005. It comes as the Bush administration is pushing Congress to approve a free trade agreement with Colombia, which U.S. labor groups are fighting on the grounds that country has not done enough to curb violence against trade union members.
• EPA scientists complain about political pressure --AP -- Hundreds of Environmental Protection Agency scientists say they have been pressured by superiors to skew their findings, according to a survey released Wednesday by an advocacy group. The Union of Concerned Scientists said more than half of the nearly 1,600 EPA staff scientists who responded online to a detailed questionnaire reported they had experienced incidents of political interference in their work.
• Worked Over and Overworked -- NY Times -- In the last couple of decades, corporate profits and executive salaries have soared. But for many workers, the only thing that has increased is insecurity. In “The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker,” Steven Greenhouse, a labor and workplace reporter for The New York Times, examines the difficulties faced by workers at companies like FedEx and Wal-Mart, and points to Patagonia and Costco as models for corporate America. The book was publish from about workers....  
• In Surprise, Ford Swings to Profit -- NY Times -- Since the automaker lost $12.6 billion in 2006, it has cut about a third of its hourly workforce through buyout and early retirement offers. The company is trying to cut more jobs this year so that it can hire replacements at significantly lower wages, under the contract it signed with the United Automobile Workers union last fall.
• Despite Negative Press, Facebook Is a Powerful Agent for Social Change -- AlterNet -- Facebook is revolutionizing the way collective political and social actions are organized today, blowing the doors off old models of how volunteer lists are amassed, funds raised, and messages honed and delivered. And no one is more surprised by that than Alex Bookbinder.
• Debt Collection Done From India Appeals to U.S. Agencies -- NY Times -- Americans are used to receiving calls from India for insurance claims and credit card sales. But debt collection represents a growing business for outsourcing companies, especially as the American economy slows and its consumers struggle to pay for their purchases. Armed with a sophisticated automated system that dials tens of thousands of Americans every hour, and puts confidential information like Social Security numbers, addresses and credit history at operators’ fingertips,... Debt collectors in India often cost about one-quarter the price of their American counterparts.
• Will your DNA keep you from a job -- AP -- Lawmakers have agreed to make it illegal for employers and insurance companies to deny applicants jobs and health care coverage because DNA tests show they are genetically disposed to a disease. Supporters of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act said Wednesday that the Senate planned to vote on it today. The House also is likely to give quick approval to the bill, sending it to President Bush for his signature.
• Actors’ Talks Extended -- NY Times -- Leaders of the Screen Actors Guild and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers agreed on Wednesday to extend their current round of contract talks through May 2, they said in a joint statement.
• Farm Income Up, but Subsidies Stay -- NY Times -- Americans are in sticker-shock over grocery prices, while people in developing countries are rioting over food shortages. And across the heartland, American farmers are enjoying record incomes, but losing sleep over rising expenses and turbulence in the commodity futures markets. Here on Capitol Hill, though, it is pretty much farm politics as usual.
• Chrysler worker fired over online post -- Detroit Free Press -- When Rob Diel told people to contact Bob Nardelli, Chrysler's chief executive, about the automaker's decision to outsource jobs, he never expected to hear back from the boss. Then corporate security showed up Friday at his desk at the Sterling Heights (Mich.) Assembly Plant. The message was clear: You're fired.

Health Care:

• A new report by Families USA --  Dying For Coverage gives great stats on state of WA health care.

• House reverses Bush's Medicaid cuts; veto threatened -- AP -- The House voted Wednesday to block the Bush administration from cutting federal spending on Medicaid health care for the poor by $13 billion over the next five years. President Bush has threatened a veto, but supporters have more than enough votes in the House to override him, and maybe in the Senate, too.
  

• Just How Secure Is Your Employer-Based Health Insurance? -- AlterNet -- Last week, the Economic Policy Institute released a disturbing report revealing just how many white-collar workers have lost their employer-based health insurance in recent years -- even though they didn't change jobs. Many workers believe that if they hold onto their job, their insurance is safe. Professionals with jobs near the top of the occupational ladder are especially likely to assume that their employer is not going to cut their coverage. That may well have been true in the 1990s, when the job market was tight -- but not today.

• Researchers Identify Contaminant in Tainted Heparin-- Washington Post -- U.S. researchers say they've confirmed that lots of the blood thinner heparin pulled from the market are contaminated with a man-made chemical called oversulfated chondroitin sulfate.

World News:

• Thousands of schools hit by strike -- Falkirk Herald -- Prime Minister Gordon Brown described the strike as "unfortunate", but he was urged by the NUT to halt the "downward spiral" in teachers' pay. One in three schools in England and Wales were closed or partially shut, with up to 90% of schools affected in some areas.

War News:

• Murray says VA official should resign -- Spokesman Review -- Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., on Tuesday called for the chief mental health official of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to resign, saying he tried to cover up the rising number of veteran suicides. Murray, the senior member of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, said Dr. Ira Katz, the VA's mental health director, deliberately withheld crucial information on the suicide risk among veterans. "Dr. Katz's irresponsible actions have been a disservice to our veterans and it is time for him to go," Murray said. "The number one priority of the VA should be caring for our veterans, not covering up the truth."
• Behind Analysts, the Pentagon’s Hidden Hand --NY Times --  The Pentagon information apparatus has used analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found. The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.

Democracy: The Cornerstone of Community

By Paul Lee

(Paul is a shop steward at OPEIU Local 8)

           Saturday April 5^th was the date that I discovered the power of democracy and why it is so integral to the formation of community. This year the 37^th Legislative District held their caucus at Cleveland High school , home of the fighting Eagles. The energy was high and people seemed enthusiastic. We heard from party notables and elected officials. Both Clinton and Obama supporters were out in force! But something happened that night that was truly transcendent.  

            It was about 4:30PM and all the festivities had ended, people had already given their speeches, and voted on their ballots. The janitors had arrived and cleared the chairs of the floor. We were instructed to make our way into the lunchroom and wait there for the final votes to be tallied. As time pressed on, we all became tired and anxious. Then suddenly, the caucus chair announces over the microphone that Pat Wright of the Total Experience Gospel Choir was going to share a couple of songs with us. I began to feel the spirit in the room begin to lift as everyone shared in singing some old time hymns. Following Pat were others that shared jokes with us, which also included Dawn Mason former State Representative from our district. Soon people were reciting poems and sharing stories, the kind that are usually reserved for the kitchen table. I don’t think it was just me that noticed what was beginning to happen. Others began talking about what a special experience this caucus process was becoming. By the time the votes were tallied, which was about 11PM I don’t think there was a person in that room that wanted to leave. We all wanted to share what had happened in the room and spread it out to our other neighbors and community.

             As I reflect on what I experienced that day, I realized that democracy is all about giving voice to each and every common man. Perhaps what draws me to the process is this notion that each person’s voice is regarded equally and that this empowers people to stand up and be heard.

Do you want to know how Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) voted on a move to repeal the federal minimum wage?

Are you interested in Sen. Hillary Clinton's (D-N.Y.) vote on a measure to rein in the soaring cost of prescription drugs for seniors and working families?

How about finding out where Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) stood on a bill that would restore the freedom of airport screeners to join a union?

Or maybe you just want to know if your U.S. House member voted with working families last year?

All that information and more about your U.S. senators and representatives is just a click or two away in the AFL-CIO's final 2007 House and Senate Voting Records. The congressional scorecards track 19 Senate votes and 24 House votes from the first session of the 110th Congress.

Workers Memorial Materials Available Online Now -- AFL-CIO Blog -- 

Each year, thousands of workers are killed on the job and millions more are injured or become ill because of their jobs.

This April 28, workers in the United States and around the world will honor those killed and injured on the job and call for improved workplace safety on Workers Memorial Day.

You can start planning and organizing a Workers Memorial Day event in your workplace or community with materials now available online from the AFL-CIO.